Abbotsford Blog – Page 65 – The world from the perspective of Melbourne's best suburb

7 March, 2006

Crap local papers

Here is what the Leader Group of local newspapers tells advertisers about the area in which the real estate ad wrapped in a couple of dumb local stories titled Melbourne Leader is distributed. 475,000 people with household incomes over $80,000 most of them earning more than $100,000. Probably inflated, but still. The only function of the Melbourne Leader homepage, such as it is, seems to be to encourage advertisers to advertise there. There doesn’t seem any way to search for local content online and look it up for free. This blog aims to be everything which Melbourne Leader is not, and spleen which is directed at the monumental waste of paper which these dreadful publications are is warmly encouraged here.

The dude is certainly not reading Melbourne Leader and the advertising department is almost certainly not interested in him. The photo is one of a brilliant Hawaii set by an American going as Konaman at Flickr.

5 March, 200610 August, 2006

Wabi Sabi Salon, a Smith St Japanese restaurant

I had dinner at Wabi Sabi, a cute little cafe restaurant near the corner of Smith and Gertrude Sts, and therefore in the immediate vicinity of many good things including Dr Follicles, Books for Cooks, Yelza, Dr Java, Enoteca, and Ladro. I had admired it many times, walking by, but never been in, except once, for takeaway. It is a lovely busy tiny little place crammed together in what I expect is a most authentic Tokyoey way. Sophia Davis (pictured) and Tomoya Kawasaki seem to be the proprieters. Sophia’s front of house not-very-Japanesishness is one of the things that first lets you know this is not your average Japanese restaurant. The whole place has a kind of Friends of the Earth meets the Napier Hotel meets whatever the equivalent of Chinoiserie is meets Toyko zen; lots of things are put together creatively and exquisitely, slightly tongue in cheek kitsch cheek by chic jowl. It gets the inaugural “Good as Hell” award, henceforth a searchable category. See flickr for more photos, especially of the charming interior decor of the outside dunny. Continue reading “Wabi Sabi Salon, a Smith St Japanese restaurant”

5 March, 2006

Books for cooks; the history of pizza

Books for Cooks is a beautiful double-fronted Gertrude St shop full of 15,000 cook books and books about food and wine more generally. Its proprietor Tim White spent a decade at what is generally regarded as Melbourne’s leading law firm, Mallesons, and is not the most ebullient shopkeeper in the world, but his and his wife Alison Schulze’s labour of love is undoubtedly our gain. They have a newsletter which you can sign up for at the website, and their bookmarks are useful for having metric-imperial conversions set out in a fashion helpful for consultation mid-recipe. They’re open 7 days, 10-6 p.m. (11-5 Sundays) and their number’s 8415 1415.

Here’s an interesting Age article about the Australian cookbook publishing market.

I bought a translation of Nikko Amandonico’s La Pizza; The True Story from Naples and learnt that the two truly authentic Neapolitan pizze are the marinara and the margherita, but marinara has no seafood at all. Elsewhere in Italy, the marinara is often called Napoletana. It owes its name to “the times when fishermen, after a night at sea, would stop off at the bakery and, extremely hungry but in a hurry to get home, would ask for a pizza that was light and quick” — tomato, garlic, oregano, and oil. Continue reading “Books for cooks; the history of pizza”